’The difference between America and Israel? There isn’t one’ Robert Fisk, The Independent 3/1/2015Netanyahu knows he can get away with anything in America – with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza Uri Avnery is without doubt the most intellectual, philosophical, prescient leftist Israeli seer I have ever met. Like TS Eliot, he has a habit of using the fewest words to tell the greatest truth. Every essay he writes, this reader always says the same thing: Exactly! Yet, for the first time in 40 years, I disagree with the great man. He has just suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu’s agreement to address the US Congress at the invitation of Republicans tomorrow – two weeks before an Israeli general election – and Barack Obama’s decision not to see the old rogue, has destroyed Israel’s bipartisan support in America. For the first time, says Uri, Democratic politicians are allowed to criticise Israel. Absolute Tosh. Congressmen of both parties have grovelled and fainted and shrieked their support for Bibi and his predecessors with more enthusiasm that the Roman hordes in the Colosseum. Last time Bibi turned up on the Hill, he received literally dozens of standing ovations from the sheep-like representatives of the American people, whose uncritical adoration of the Israeli state – and their abject fear of uttering the most faint-hearted criticism lest they be called anti-Semites – suggest that Bibi would be a far more popular US president than Barack. And Bibi’s impeccable American accent doesn’t hurt. And his aim – to earn votes for himself and to destroy the one foreign policy achievement within Obama’s grasp – will have absolutely no effect at all on Israeli-US relations....more..e-mail

The story of a young man in the Israeli lobby Hossam Shaker, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) 3/2/2015 It is interesting that the AIPAC conference programme includes one session dedicated to a young Palestinian man. At first glance, it would seem as if the Israeli lobby in America was supporting peace and harmony, but there is no need to be optimistic. This young man was a "former Palestinian" who said that Israel is right in everything it does and that the violations committed by its army are legitimate; it is victim blaming and the glorification of the executioner. At first, the story may seem interesting; a Palestinian boy leaves his family, country and cause and attacks his culture under false justification spun by the occupation's propaganda. In addition to this, he is also the son of a Palestinian Hamas leader and therein lies the extraordinariness of his story, making it very exciting. Those who have kept up with the story since its beginning, with the sudden emergence of the young man named Mosab, and then transforming the suspicious story into the book Son of Hamas/The Green Prince, followed by the efforts made to promote the book and the production of a film with the same title, would find themselves facing a hollow media bubble. The young man's story and history was exaggerated in this context in a naïve manner in order to give his individual story great significance. The pro-Israeli propaganda tried to portray Mosab as an innocent boy whose conscience woke up and he emerged to tell the truth. However, this young man's journey was not one of an awakened conscience, but a journey of falling into the grips of the Israeli intelligence, which lured him and used him to spy on his community. They then carried him up to the propaganda platform before the world to talk in the language of self-hate. Those contemplating the young man's experience and expressions would doubt his emotional and psychological balance and stability....more..e-mail

10 Reasons To Pray for AIPAC’s Decline Medea Benjamin, CounterPunch 3/2/2015The Demise Ahead As a secular Jew, I don’t do much praying. But this week, as the powerful pro-Israeli government lobby AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) holds its annual policy meeting in Washington DC, I’m praying that this year marks the beginning of the end of the lobby’s grip on US foreign policy. From March 1-3, over 10,000 AIPAC supporters will descend on the nation’s capital. The meeting comes at a time when the relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at an all-time low. Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress right after he speaks at the AIPAC conference is seen by the White House as a direct attempt to undermine the president and his administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. In an unprecedented move, over 50 brave congresspeople have decided to skip Netanyahu’s Congressional address. AIPAC’s support of the Israeli prime minister over the US president is turning AIPAC into a Republican-biased lobby that could hopefully prove fatal to its future influence in Washington. Here are ten reasons why this would be good for world peace: 1. AIPAC wants to sabotage nuclear talks with Iran. AIPAC – like the Israeli government –has no faith in the complex negotiations under way between Iran and the US (along with its five partners) to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. It pushes for greater sanctions on Iran knowing that—as Secretary of State John Kerry has said—additional sanctions would threaten the diplomatic path. AIPAC, which has successfully lobbied the US government to adopt crippling economic sanctions on Iran in the past, is ignoring White House warnings and its lobby day this year will push for the Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, a bill the President has vowed to veto. If the nuclear talks fail, the violence that has engulfed the Middle East will only get worse and will put the US on a dangerous path to more war.more..e-mail

Spy Cables show America’s hypocrisy on Hamas Asa Winstanley, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) 2/25/2015 The publication by Al Jazeera and The Guardian this week of a cache of cables leaked from the files of the South African intelligence services has been enlightening. Some of the stories that have come out so far only confirm things that were already known. However, these are still valuable for the extra detail they provide and the way they verify certain stories with independent sourcing. For example, it was already well-known that the Palestinian Authority led an extensive diplomatic campaign against the promotion and adoption of the Goldstone report in international forums like the UN Human Rights Council. Although the PA publicly claimed to support it, the Palestine Papers in 2011 revealed that behind the scenes they buckled to American and Israeli pressure to ensure the report's recommendations were never implemented. The report ultimately accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes during Israel's devastating and bloody assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09. Hamas, for its part, fully cooperated with the South African judge's report, although it disagreed with the part of the conclusions that accused its armed wing of war crimes. The new revelations in the Spy Cables confirm the story that Palestine Papers tell. One cable shows how Mossad chief Meir Dagan personally called the head of South Africa's State Security Agency on his mobile phone. The number had not been given out: the agents expressed concern, and launched an internal investigation into how the number was obtained by Israeli spies. Once Dagan's identity had been confirmed, the South Africans promised to pass his message onto the political echelon, warning they would have little influence there.... -- See also: EI: ex, blackmail and theft: leaks detail Israeli spy operationsmore..e-mail

Palestine Chronicle: 3 Mar 2015 - By Ramzy Baroud Whenever a new poem by Mahmoud Darwish was published in al-Quds newspaper, I rushed over to Abu Aymen’s newsstand that was located in the refugee camp’s main square. It was a crowded and dusty place where grimy taxis waited for passengers, surrounded by fish and vegetable venders. Darwish’s poetry was too cryptic for us teenagers at a refugee camp in Gaza to fathom. But we laboured away anyway. Every word, and all the imagery and symbolism were analyzed and decoded to mean perhaps something entirely different from what the famed Palestinian Arab poet had intended. We were a rebellious generation hungry for freedom that was soon to carry the burden of the popular uprising, or Intifada, and we sought in Darwish’s incomparable verses, not an escape, but a roadmap for revolution. Ignore the political choices made by Darwish after the disastrous Oslo peace process – that is...

Palestine Chronicle: 2 Mar 2015 - By Tariq Shadid In Jordan, opposition against the Israeli-Jordanian gas deal is growing. While politicians are working out the details, there appears to be widespread criticism of plans by the Jordanian National Electric Power Company to import gas from the Leviathan fields. The fields are located in the Mediterranean waters controlled by Israel, operated by US company Noble Energy, and co-owned by three Israeli companies. An overwhelmingly majority in the Jordanian Parliament voted in December 2014 to urge the government to cancel the letter of intent. Campaigners started mobilizing as soon as the news came out of the signing, and held a series of activities and calls to action, and have been preparing for the ‘Day of Refusal‘ on March 6th. Khaled Al Shakaa is a member of Jordan BDS, and the National Jordanian Coalition against the gas deal. He feels strongly about this issue, and is determined to express...

Palestine Chronicle: 1 Mar 2015 - By Jeremy Salt “To achieved all that you have the power, ability or strength to do and to be unable to do more.” — Cambridge Dictionaries Online definition of ‘to shoot your bolt.’ That the US and its allies are ultimately responsible for the rise of the so-called Islamic State is irrefutably true. They destroyed Iraq and Libya and they have gone a long way to destroying Syria, and they must be held responsible for the consequences of their actions, which include the rise of the Islamic State. Because of what they have done, IS now controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, almost to the gates of Baghdad. In Libya it has taken over Derna, Benghazi and Sirte, Muammar Al Qadhafi’s model city on the shores of the Mediterranean, which ‘NATO’ (the US, Britain and France) air forces bombed relentlessly for months. From the beginning Qadhafi warned that the...

Palestine Chronicle: 1 Mar 2015 - By Sam Bahour Today, Palestinian political strategy is being driven in the total absence of a functioning political system. Israel’s forced fragmentation of our geographic reality mixed with internal political party divisions, disgust, despair and incompetence, the status quo tears apart Palestine’s societal fabric. If it remains on its current course, the train of national liberation is bound to derail, resulting in serious, if not permanent, damage to our bid for freedom and independence. Repairing the Palestinian political system cannot wait any longer. Almost every week in Palestine a political personality or think tank invites a group of thinkers to hash out what can be done to halt the imminent crash of our political project. Efforts to bring us together when so many powers are trying to keep us in permanent disarray are of course welcome. However, unlike many of those who take joy in merely being in the presence...

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